Martin Heidegger wrote that the true essence of a tool shines through
at the moment when it breaks. The Barcelona-based Joystick collective
takes this insight to its logical conclusion for internet art. On
their website, in addition to theoretical texts and records of their
various performances, one can find Joystick's ERROR project, an
'investigation of the aesthetics of glitches.' The ongoing project
takes as its starting point 'The Raw Archive,' a collection of images,
video and sound files. Each captures a particular slip-up in the
digital process, removing it from its original context and
reframing it as art. One favorite is a brief clip, tagged as a 'video compression error:' prismatic blocks of color seeth and slide apart while the ghostly forms of nude women flicker in and out, barely perceptible amidst the shimmering noise. Joystick's ultimate goal is to explore the patterns in the glitches that their fans send them in further works of art--so if you are ever
frustrated with your computer's misfires, be sure to send them
Joystick's way! - Ben Davis

December saw the eighteenth and final issue of HorizonZero, the Banff New Media Institute's three year-old monthly web journal of new media, art, culture and technology. The last issue, Ghost, commemorates HorizonZero with essays on obsolescence and digital amnesia; net projects that play with media past; and an interactive 'Museum of Abandoned Things' (featuring the DVD player, a relic to be replaced by bandwidth in the year 2007). The essays on the historicization of digital culture are more than a little self-conscious: 2005 will see the release of a HorizonZero DVD, and just in time for the tenth anniversary of the institute. Reading and viewing archived essays and projects that are explicitly about the very challenges of archiving can set your brain whirling. Best to remember that the beauty of interactive technologies is not their timelessness, but their ability to effect and reorganize time. The forthcoming HorizonZero DVD won't last forever, but it’s not meant to be eternal: it’s meant to be explored. - Christine Smallwood

'We are in need of a book which reflects the actual (and future)
state of the art of thinking about, and inventing, the digital medium
in its capacity to subvert cultural practices a cyberfeminist
perspective can provide.' This was the ambitious call from editors
Claudia Reiche and Verena Kuni but, as they anticipated, they were
inundated with contributions. A stringent policy was applied and the
editors selected only those articles that were clearly situated in
the cyber realm or that documented artistic and political practices
in which the computer is integral (more than an email and typewriter
tool). The result is 'Cyberfeminism: Next Protocols', 18 chapters
with intriguing titles such as 'Cyber@rexia: Anorexia and
Cyberspace,' 'Female-Bobs Arrive at Dusk' and 'If Cyberfeminism is
a Monster... then Clitoris Visibility = true.' Available from
Autonomedia, 'Cyberfeminism: Next Protocols' will sit happily on your
bookshelf alongside the recently published 'Domain Errors!'--the
latter dealing with gender in relation to technology in the broader
sense, and this new collection focusing on reformulating gender
specifically within the digital medium. - Helen Varley Jamieson

Tis the season to be a consumer. Dreams of digital gadgets and new appliances unfurl in front of our eyes in a seemingly endless parade of models and prices. Amidst this dizzying array of choices, there is something satisfying about having one's options limited. This is the logic behind 56k TV - Bastard Channel, a quasi television channel based on the web. Produced by Xcult.org, who have been organizing online art collaborations since 1995, 56k TV features programs that reformat television genres to fit the formal and conceptual structures of net art, such as a notably low bandwidth. The result is a play-list that ranges widely in style, genre and speed, and available only on a restricted schedule. The programs include a text-based, mystery miniseries by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, a news show narrated by a TV Bot created by Marc Lee, and a talk show titled 'New From the Dead' in which dead loved ones are conjured back from beyond the grave to commune with a studio audience. Take respite from the freedom to be a rampant holiday consumer, and catch 56k's promising first season while you still can. - Lauren Cornell

Mining and re-presenting metadata is no new subject for art. Contemporary artists like Fred Wilson and Andrea Fraser have inserted artistic interventions into the didactic apparatus of galleries and museums since the 1980s. But, with developments in technology designed to match mobile users and location-specific data, the ability to reframe larger spaces for larger audiences becomes possible. 'Art Mobs,' a new project named after Howard Rheingold's 'Smart Mobs,' uses the capabilities of portable, decentralized broadcasting devices to create peer-to-peer gallery tours. Developed by Marymount Manhattan College professor Dr. David Gilbert and students from his Organizational Communication Course, 'Art Mobs' launched on December 8, 2004. In collaboration with the Yellow Arrow project, Gilbert and company 'tagged' artworks in Manhattan with audio interviews and written commentary available via a podcast and collected text messages. Given the increasingly intimate relationship between consumer technology and cultural production, I wonder what kind of tour Ms. Fraser would put on my iPod. - Ryan Griffis

Begun as a private experiment, New York-based artist Stewart Smith's Confess project soon took on a life of its own by virtue of its own logic: users sign up with anonymous accounts, and are given the opportunity to bare their souls into an internet confessional. In return, they are allowed to view the anonymous confessions of other users. Users can comment (again, anonymously) on what they view, and see the comments of others on their own secrets. The only control
that the process has is a rating system; the 'better' one's
confessions are rated, 'better' are the confessions one will see, setting up an addictive emotional economy. Sherman has kept the presentation deliberately minimal, giving the site a personality that is both earnest and vaguely unnerving, reflecting the ambiguous feelings provoked by impersonal honesty. The effect of sitting down in front of the screen and being asked to communicate without consequences is strangely powerful, and the results stir interesting thoughts about the fate of sincerity on the web. - Ben Davis

Creative water quality visualisation is behind 'Floating Point,' a
project undertaken by multimedia artist Tiffany Holmes during a
residency at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's
Computational/Collaborational Laboratory (CoLab). Holmes used data
gathered by water scientists in shockwave animations to illustrate the effects of water pollution. Factors such as temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and flow are altered by moving sliders, and the changes are reflected in images--human faces, photographs of water and geometric shapes. The resulting animations are simple yet powerful, and are accompanied by explanatory texts that blend scientific and environmental facts with artistic
motivation. Says Holmes, 'When developing 'Floating Point,' I
started with a small, pixel sized square. Water is the basic unit of
life, the pixel is the basic unit of the screen environment. Data
gathered over time can create complexity out of very simple things.'
Her objective is to render pollution data accessible through art and
performance, thereby encouraging more responsible and sustainable
attitudes towards the precious resource that is water. - Helen
Varley Jamieson

Till February 19 at Spacex in Exeter, UK: the exhibition 'Computing 101B'
includes two installation works by JODI; 'My%Desktop,' 2002 and 'Max Payne Cheats Only Gallery,' 2004. Shown together these projects heighten the tension their work provokes as well as illuminate its psychological and sociological aspects. 'My%Desktop' (inaugurated at Eyebeam, New York) places the viewer in the position subservient to the computer; 4 screens loom overhead, versus our usual reversed position of 'control.' The desktops are visually and aurally 'out of control,' which emphasizes an unconscious anxiety of being powerlessness in the face of technology. 'Max Payne Cheats Only Gallery' (commissioned by FACT, Liverpool) reflects the viewer more specifically; the Max Payne character (from the computer game) is not controlled by the gamer and seems to be destined to spend eternity lost in a world created by the computer. 'Computing 101B' notes JODI's shift in focus in 2003 to making work for gallery exhibitions, a shift which now adds a physical dimension to the experience of their work. - laurie halsey brown

Over the last few months the Toronto collective Prize Budget for Boys has attracted attention online and off for their project Pac-Mondrian, which transplants the game of Pac-Man into the similarly blippy grid of 1943 hit painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. In their update, Pac-Man's chomping is underscored by the kind of jazzy tune that inspired Mondrian, and each pod consumed triggers a syncopated hi-hat or other percussive flare. Players can put themselves inside the art online, as well as in person through the life-sized arcade cabinet that is currently on the Let's Play Art World Tour. With the conclusion of a recent stop at Toronto's Art Metropole, the artists have kicked off the sale of Pac-Mondrian merch, which appropriately aims to clone and cash in on their creation with such collectors items as authenticated proofs, postcards, and the forthcoming Pac-Mondrian Vacuum Cleaner. - Kevin McGarry

Continuing through January 16, bitforms gallery in Chelsea presents a small survey of early computer-based work entitled, 'Scratch Code.' Ranging from Ben Laposky's seminal oscilloscope imagery to Peter Vogel's interactive sound sculptures, the show explores this genre of art in its mirror stage. The sounds and forms also reflect the space between this former period of computer graphics and the present. Like in Tony Pritchett's Flexipede, a looped animated piece in which an endearing centipede-like character is continuously disbanded and reconstructed, the awkward movement of the animation evokes a whole series connections to early video game systems and graphic programs like Basic and Logo. Increasingly, a contemporary generation of artists, web-designers and animators draws from this aesthetic of early computer animation, games and sound. For those that grew up playing with the electronic games and learning the programming languages of the 1970s and 80s, the significance of this history is intrinsically related to this particularly strange literacy and the set of references created by these types of designs and formats. - David Senior